Tim Berne continued Bloodcount's forays into extended-form creative jazz with Poisoned Minds, the second installment of the band's live CD series recorded at Instants Chavirés in Paris during September of 1994. There are only two pieces on the disc, "The Other" at 27 and a half minutes and "What Are the Odds?" at 41 and a half minutes; with running times like those, Berne was clearly not aiming for significant airplay on commercial radio (or inclusion in a playlist on "shuffle"). Instead, Poisoned Minds is for serious listeners without attenuated attention spans, a somewhat radical concept in itself. Yet aside from the lengths of the pieces, many elements of the music are not particularly radical despite Berne's avant-garde rep -- melody, rhythm, and theme are all important to the saxophonist, and the innovation comes from the way he manipulates structure, fitting the pieces of the puzzle together in unpredictable ways. "The Other" begins with Berne on alto and Chris Speed on clarinet, stating a bluesy, soulful, and somewhat melancholy theme in rubato time; drummer Jim Black uses this opportunity to color the music with textural embellishments rather than drive it forward. Urgent propulsion is dominant in the piece's middle section, where tension is stretched to the breaking point as Black and bassist Michael Formanek jam out with a twisted rhythm and Berne and Speed, scarcely taking time to inhale, throw long purple-faced lines over the top. And yet "The Other" perhaps finds its greatest power in an uneasy conclusion that combines elements of free jazz and chamber music, subverting any expectations of a slam-bang finale.

1		The Other
2		What Are the Odds? Speed/J.B.'s Stove/A Slight Discrepancy in the Figur